Save-on-Meats is one of the last businesses standing from the glory days of Hastings Street downtown. Its neon sign — two flying pigs holding money bags that read “$,” separated by a three-storey high revolving bit that reads “$ave-on” on one side, “Meat$” on the flip — is a beloved Vancouver icon.

But just as the Woodward’s redevelopment is set to open and Hastings Street may enjoy a commercial renaissance, it may be closing.

Owner Al DesLauriers is 78, and wants to retire. He quietly put the Save-on-Meats building at 43 West Hastings up for sale last year for $3 million, and may close the business down on March 14 if he can’t find a buyer.

Still, he would much rather keep the business running, so he’s looking for ways to keep it going.

“That’s what I’ve been working on day and night,” said DesLauriers, who has been with Save-on-Meats since it opened on Aug. 29, 1957 and bought the business in 1980.

DesLauriers is a meat man, pure and simple. When most boys his age were dreaming of becoming a hockey or baseball player, he decided he wanted to be a butcher.

“I knew I was going to be in the meat business when I was 12 years old,” relates DesLauriers, who was born in The Pas, Man., and grew up in New Westminster.

“My best friend’s father had a meat market, and we used to go there and help to clean up. I loved the action, I loved the people, the customers. I said ‘This is what I’m going to do when I grow up.’”

He bought his first meat market (Jackson’s Grocery in North Vancouver) when he was only 19.

“I learned cutting meat from a book,” he said.

“The man I bought [Jackson’s Grocery] from said he’d teach me how to cut if I bought it. He’d showed me how to set it up on a Thursday, and the next day he didn’t show up. So I looked around and there was an old book from the First World War that showed how to cut meat.

“People would come in and say ‘Gee, you’re awfully young to be cutting meat, how long have you been cutting meat?’ And I said ‘Oh, since last night.’”

Eventually he owned another meat shop (Front Street Market) on Hastings, which was a bustling commercial zone in the 1950s. When Sonny Wosk opened up Save-on-Meats in 1957, he brought in DesLauriers to manage the meat department.

“He made a deal with me that if I would run it as if I owned it, when he was ready to sell he’d sell it to me,” he said.

“We just shook hands on it, and 25 years later, that’s what happened.”

The concept was to have the lowest prices in town, and the business thrived.

“We have about 17 [employees] now,” he said. “In our heyday, we had 74 in the meat department: 25 cutters and 49 clerks.”

When Save-on-Meats opened, 10,000 people a day used to arrive at Carrall and Hastings by Interurban trams. But the Interurban shut down in 1958, and Hastings began a long, slow decline. Suburban malls cut into business in the 1960s and 70s, businesses closed and buildings stood vacant. But DesLauriers kept Save-on-Meats open through it all.

“You just watch your customer,” he said of his retail philosophy.

“They speak Chinese, so you get a Chinese-speaking person [on staff], and that person builds your business. It’s got to be a service counter, not a self-service. It’s got to be service, one-on-one.”

That philosophy appealed to customers like Ian Tiles, who has been shopping at Save-on-Meats for three decades.

“He maintained a standard down there, in spite of the world collapsing around him,” said Tiles.

“The stock was always fresh. He always kept the sign up, it was always in good shape. It’s amazing. I love the guy.”

Tiles said there was another side to DesLauriers the public didn’t see.

“He’s invested down there,” Tiles said.

“He’s helped a lot of convicts, he hires a lot of cons up in his butcher shop upstairs. He’s a very good guy. The face of Vancouver will change when he’s no longer there, it really will.

“It’s like when I lost my dentist. After 30 years in Vancouver, she retired on me! I couldn’t believe it.”

What will happen to the Save-on-Meats neon sign? Tim McLean of Sicon Signs said it will remain on the building for the time being. He also said it would cost about $80,000 to make a sign that that today.

Neon historian John Atkin thinks the sign should stay where it is as a piece of public art. He argues that it’s a key part of a historic neon strip that includes glorious neon signs for the Ovaltine Cafe, the Empress Hotel, the Washington, the Balmoral Hotel and the Only Seafoods.

“It should remain in place, no matter what the development is," said Atkin.

“Save-on-Meats is an icon on the street and should be preserved in situ. There were many great signs [in Vancouver], but this one is iconic, with its pigs, the dollars. It spins, it blinks, it does everything a good proper neon sign should do.”

Joan Seidl of the Vancouver Museum would be interested in saving the the Save-on-Meats neon if it had to come down. But she said the sign is so big, displaying it would be problematic.

“Our preference is that the sign stays in situ somewhere on the street,” she said.

“It’s always better than an occasional exhibition at the museum. That particular sign would be a challenge because it’s big. Whether we could ever even show it upright here .... the pigs would have to lay on their back,” she laughs.

DesLauriers did receive one offer for his four storey, 20,000 sq. ft. building, but turned it down because it was from a developer that had no interest in keeping Save-on-Meats open.

“I wanted to sell the whole thing, the shares and everything, so they could continue as a business,” he said.

“But their intentions weren’t that at all, they just wanted to buy the assets and close it down and take the sign down. And I didn’t want that.”

Asked if he had considered selling Save-on-Meats to Jimmy Pattison, who has the Save-On Foods chain, he chuckles. He doesn’t want to go into detail, but reached an arrangement with Pattison when Pattison opened Save-On Foods.

“We had a good relationship,” said DesLauriers.

“We made a deal years ago when he first took the name. We come out okay there. I read up on that stuff, eh? It never pays to fight over a trademark. Somebody loses.”

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